Understanding Assessment in Primary School

1. Understanding Assessment in Primary School

2. Reason for Assessment Evening Direct response to parent survey. Purpose of Assessment Evening 1. Help parents understand what assessments their children will take in Primary School and why. 2.To help parents understand what the assessments are for and what the results mean.

3. Why Assess? Assessment plays a key role in helping schools to improve outcomes. Knowing how each pupil is performing allows teachers to help individuals improve. This in turn promotes improvement at class level, then at school level, allowing the school to set meaningful and challenging targets in its School Development Plan.

4. Types of Assessment

5. Diagnostic Assessment Finding out strengths to celebrate and weaknesses to be worked on for the whole class or individuals over the year

6. Formative Assessment Teacher highlighting and explaining problems as go along and children assessing themselves. Also known as ‘Assessment for Learning’

7. Observational Assessment Foundation stage teachers closely observing children in learning activities and identifying strengths and areas for development.

8. Summative Assessment End of year tests summing up achievement over a whole year.

9. Diagnostic Assessment

10. Diagnostic Assessment It is finding out the: • Strengths • Areas for Development

11. Computer Based Assessments Early in Year Sept/Oct LITERACY / NUMERACY Strengths and areas for development identified. Shared with parents at 1st Parent Interview Replacing INCAS Sept 2012

14. Formative/Observational Assessment

16. Assessment for Learning • Often called formative assessment • Takes place during the learning • Makes pupils active participants in their learning and focuses on next steps in learning • Feeds forward to manage improvements • Fosters responsibility for & ownership of learning • Establishes where they are, where they need to go and how to get there

17. AfL in the Classroom It involves teachers teaching pupils: • what they are about to learn and why; • how to be successful at attaining the new learning; • how to understand quality criteria and use them to self-assess – a vital life skill; and • how to ask, as well as answer, better questions to deepen their own learning.

18. Research Evidenced Impacts Teacher Outcomes • More focused on pupils’ learning • More concerned with the learning than activity or performance • More reflective about own practice • Greater control passed to pupils • Changed relationship between teacher and pupil

19. Research Evidenced Impacts Pupil Outcomes • Raised self-esteem and increased confidence • Greater resilience • Improved tenacity and perseverance • Acquired vocabulary for learning • Changed relationship between teacher and pupil • Improvements in performance, motivation, engagement, attainment and independence

20. Summative Assessment

21. Assessment of Learning • Often called summative assessment • Takes place after the learning • Focuses on pupils’ achievements • Is used to provide feedback to parents based on performance evidence

22. Many aspects of human performance occur predictably like this eg. running race, shoe size, height

23. What does the bell curve mean? Bell Curve: An Explanation. "Bell Curve" is the popular name for Normal Distribution. It is often called the bell curve because the graph of its probability density resembles a bell.

24. It can be used to measure anything If you map certain things out, you will find that most people fall within a certain range. Let's say you were looking at number of hours of tv watched per week. The greatest percentage of people will probably fall within a similar range (say, 15-20 hours weekly) the further out you get from the norm (say 1 or 50 hours weekly) the fewer people will fall into that category.

25. Normal bell curve distribution

27. Standardisation Standardised scores are measured by the pupil’s raw score and their chronological age Standardisation allows pupils to be compared to other pupils of the same age throughout the United Kingdom Different tests can also be compared to one another

28. Standardisation Standardised scores from most educational tests cover the same range from 70 to 140. Hence a pupil's standing in, say, mathematics and English can be compared directly using standardised scores.

29. Standard deviation Tells you how much better or worse than the mean/average score a pupil has scored

30. Summary of Annual Assessment at Ballycarrickmaddy

32. Reporting to Parents based on assessment

33. Annual Pupil Report Formal communication with parents to summarise strengths and areas for development for each pupil. CCEA

34. A – A pupil working below the expected level but has made the normal expected progress. B- A Statemented child who has above the expected ability and has learnt to deal with formal assessment. C- A pupil above the expected level who has underperformed in 2 tests. Not 2 years. D – A pupil working above the expected level who as made the normal expected progress.

35. End of Keystage Reporting • Parent of pupil’s in P4 & P7 receive assessment levels. NEW LEVELS STARTING 2012/12 • Communication (Literacy) • Using Mathematics • Using I.C.T.

36. Ks1 1 2 3 Ks 2 1 2 3 4 5 Expected Ks 1 – level 2 Expected Ks 2 – level 4 Expected Ks 3 – level 5

37. Using ICT

38. Using Mathematics

39. Using Communication (literacy)

40. The Assessment Balancing Act • All types of assessment are important. • The Northern Ireland Curriculum seeks a better balance between them.

41. Final Point “Assessment is not meant to be used as a measure of your child’s ability at school but as a means to improve their ability to learn; their knowledge and their skills. Much of what is learnt is never fully assessed but used every bit as much.”